Category: 2019

  • Dog whisperer

    Telluride Daily Planet, Friday, December 6, 2019   Last time I had an actual puppy in my life, I was 12. All the siblings had already graduated from high school, and it was just me and the ’rents in a big and overly quiet house. I don’t remember much about having Arbie as an 8-week-old,…

  • Bud vase diaries

    Telluride Daily Planet, Friday, November 1, 2019   Three days before my French aunt Bibiche’s (Bee-beesh) 95th birthday recently, I remembered that I’d forgotten it (again), and that (again) it was too late to send a card or letter or anything that would show care, appreciation, forethought and good manners, the kind she had and…

  • Onion skins

    Telluride Daily Planet, Friday, October 4, 2019   One of my favorite quotes of all time is actually from Ernest Hemingway: “The hardest thing about writing [or painting, for that matter] is that first you have to clean the refrigerator.” Brilliant. Because for some of us, before doing anything that requires use of the creative…

  • Sea-green helmets

    Telluride Daily Planet, Friday, September 6, 2019   By far, the two most important and far-reaching things we did this summer were tiny in the enormous scheme of it all: We spent $8 and got a hummingbird feeder, like millions of other people before us; and we borrowed “Devotions” by the poet Mary Oliver from…

  • Purple stain

    Telluride Daily Planet, Friday, August 2, 2019   Anybody from the northwest who likes a little sour in their fruits or is a sucker for anything that ends in “berry,” (thimbleberry, salmonberry, huckleberry, Marionberry and cloudberry, among others on a long list) will vouch for the blackberry’s true standing in the ranks. For one thing,…

  • Accordion files

    Telluride Daily Planet, Friday, July 5, 2019   A bunch of years ago (almost 20) when I was in my I-don’t-know-what phase, I became smitten by this idea of playing the accordion. Of having one in my arms, doing the squeezy thing, and somehow reinventing myself, one more time, as someone who … well, played…